The field of the present invention relates to self-checkout systems and methods.
In an effort to reduce a customer""s waiting time in a checkout line of a retail establishment, manual price keying of each item being purchased has been replaced by the process of scanning a bar code of each item to obtain price information. Bar code readers are used in commercial and retail environments to accomplish this scanning process. In a retail checkout transaction, the consumer presents the items to be purchased to the cashier at a checkout register, and the cashier scans each item. In addition, there may be an ID check if the customer is purchasing an age-restricted item such as, but not by way of limitation, beer, wine, liquor, tobacco, cigarettes, or certain solvents. The transaction is completed once all the items have been scanned, all the coupons have been accepted, the total costs have been calculated, and the consumer has paid for the items. Even though scanning all the items at a checkout register takes less time than manually entering each item description into the computer, the sequential presentation to a cashier of each individual purchase can still take a long time and create long checkout lines. This time-consuming process can cause bottlenecks at the checkout stations, reducing throughput, making customers unhappy, and affecting the financial condition of a retail establishment.
A new way of conducting a checkout transaction is by self-checkout. In a self-checkout system, each customer, rather than the cashier, scans the bar codes of the items being purchased. After selecting all the shopping items, a customer brings all the items to a stationary self-checkout system. A self-checkout system typically comprises a scanner/scale for reading the product/coupon bar codes and weighing the sold-by-weight items, a weighing scale for item confirmation/security, and a checkout terminal for generating the final bill and accepting payment.
Once at the self-checkout system, the customer undergoes the following sequential process for each item being purchased: 1) the customer scans the bar code of the item being purchased, and 2) the customer puts the item on the weighing scale so that it can be verified that the weight of the item on the scale matches stored weight information for the item scanned.
After all the purchases have been individually scanned and weight verified, any relevant coupons are also scanned. The customer requests the final bill by selecting an appropriate input on the checkout terminal. In response to the customer""s request, the total purchase price is displayed on the terminal screen, and the bill is printed out. The customer tenders payment to the checkout terminal. The terminal can accept payments by any standard payments method. Once the bill has been paid and the receipt issued, the self-checkout transaction is finished, and the customer can leave the store.
A problem with this type of self-checkout system and method of self-checkout is that it requires a separate item security verification step, e.g., weight verification step, for each item scan. The present inventors have recognized that, for multiple items, the separate step of weight verifying for each item scan is time-consuming, and can lead to the aforementioned problems of bottlenecks at the checkout stations, reduced throughput, unhappy customers, and negative impact on the financial condition of the establishment.
Thus, the present inventors have recognized that by allowing more than one item to be scanned, read, or input before weight verifying or performing another physical characteristic security verification procedure for the item(s) reduces the duration of the checkout process.
The present invention in one aspect is directed to a checkout system for an establishment that allows a customer to checkout multiple items having respective identification codes. In a preferred construction, the system includes a computer having memory with a buffer, an identification code reader coupled to the computer for determining the identifications of the items by the identification codes, a security verification mechanism coupled to the computer for verifying that the items actually being checked out from the establishment are the same as those identified by the identification code reader, and whereby the computer is adapted to store identification information of multiple items obtained by the identification code reader in the buffer before verifying that the items actually being checked out from the establishment are the same as those identified by the identification code reader. In a preferred implementation of the above, the system is a self-checkout system for a retail establishment.
An additional aspect of the present invention involves a method of self-checkout. The method includes consecutively reading the bar codes of multiple grocery store items to be checked out and storing identification information for the multiple grocery store items in a buffer, and then performing a security verification step including verifying for security purposes that the weight of the items actually being checked out from the grocery store match the weight associated with the stored identification information for the items.
Other and further objects, features, aspects, and advantages of the present inventions will become better understood with the following detailed description of the accompanying drawings.